A new catalyst of 12-molybdophosphoric acid for cationic polymerization of styrene: activity and mechanism studies

✍ Scribed by Dianyu Chen; Zhigang Xue; Zhixing Su

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 103 KB
• Volume: 203
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1381-1169
• DOI: 10.1016/s1381-1169(03)00370-4

✦ Synopsis

A new and efficient catalyst of 12-molybdophosphoric acid was employed in this paper for styrene cationic polymerization. The characteristic polymerization was so efficient that in less than 20 min the monomer conversion was up to 84%, and the polymer product yield was obtained 74.66%. In order to acknowledge this new catalysis reaction, special techniques of infrared spectroscopy (IR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectronic energy spectroscopy (XPS) were used in this paper, and it showed that the crystal structure of the heteropoly anion was not destroyed during reaction, and the protons dissociating in catalyst played important role in polymerization. Finally the possible mechanism was put forward as electron coordination-cationic polymerized reaction theory. In this theory, the aimed catalyst played three important roles as: oxidation agent, polymerization initiator, and the operate anion of the growing cationic center.